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Golden Years

James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
James Chappel’s thought-provoking Golden Years offers strategies to understand and address the needs of America’s aging population.
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The Incorruptibles

Dan Slater’s vibrant The Incorruptibles chronicles the homegrown vice squad that took down New York City’s most notorious turn-of-the-century gangsters.
NonfictionBiography

The Genius of Judy

Review by Kelly Blewett

More than a fan letter to Judy Blume or a hit-by-hit summary of her career, The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us defends a critically engaged thesis: Blume meant so much to so many because she took the ideas of second-wave feminism and recast them as compulsively readable narratives. Blume was, biographer Rachelle Bergstein writes, “the Second Wave’s secret weapon.”

By writing about everything from menstruation (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) to masturbation (Deenie) to teens who have sex without regret (Forever), Blume took growing up seriously, and took the girls’ pleasure seriously, too. She came of age as a writer and woman during the height of the Second Wave and the sexual revolution. Bergstein traces the interlocking of the women’s movement with Blume’s oeuvre, putting her books in conversation with seminal feminist texts like Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Feminine Mystique. Blume’s biography fits right in: Bored and frustrated by her duties as a housewife and mother, writing gave Blume “the zap of something familiar from her girlhood: something electric and joyful. A distant, yet sacred, creative force welled up inside her.”

As a result of Bergstein’s biography, any fan of Judy Blume will gain fresh context on how her body of work amplified and reflected feminist thinking at the time. For instance, thinking about Wifey as Blume’s version of Erica Jong’s feminist classic The Fear of Flying prompted me to reread Wifey—and to enjoy it more. Bergstein excels at this kind of analysis. Her chatty, entertaining summaries of Blume’s books provide important context without getting lost in the weeds.

Blume gathers her laurels today not only for writing honestly about women’s and girls’ experiences, but also for her resistance to book banning. (According to Bergstein, Blume was the most banned author in the 1980s; her books have been fingered in the most recent bans as well.) Those concerned by the current wave of book banning will find Blume’s advocacy for authors and libraries both heartening and instructive. While readers might wish that Blume had participated in The Genius of Judy directly by offering an interview or access to private archives, Bergstein’s groundbreaking book is analytical, smart and accessible, ultimately demonstrating how Blume’s work has contributed to ongoing cultural shifts across multiple generations of women.

 

More than just a fan letter to Judy Blume, The Genius of Judy shows how the groundbreaking author’s work has impacted multiple generations of women.

The Devil Behind the Badge

The Devil Behind the Badge is an unsettling true crime account of a U.S. Border Patrol officer who mercilessly preyed on society’s most vulnerable.
NonfictionHistoryCultural History

The Bookshop

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

“If bookstores were animals, they’d be on the list of endangered species,” notes author and historian Evan Friss in The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore. While endangered, bookstores are also, as Friss convincingly argues, resilient, powerful places with the capacity to anchor communities, shape lives and bring people together.

Friss sets the stage for his entertaining romp through history with an introductory portrait of Three Lives & Company, a cozy independent bookshop in Manhattan’s West Village with 6,000 books crammed into hand-carved shelves, and colorful booksellers who have worked there for decades and “keep track of inventory by hand, jotting down titles sold on yellow notepads.” Friss was more than a loyal customer there. When he married bookseller Amanda, the shop closed for the occasion.

Friss doesn’t neglect facts and figures, which can be depressing for those of us who could never quite enjoy You’ve Got Mail. We learn, for example, that the U.S. Census Bureau reported 13,499 bookstores in 1993; by 2021, the figure had dropped to 5,591. However, more than anything, Friss is a storyteller. Each chapter introduces us to fascinating, dedicated booksellers, including the multitalented Benjamin Franklin, who had a bookshop before bookselling businesses were widespread in the colonies. Friss tells us, “He was a shopkeeper who sold books (retail and wholesale), a printer (and sometimes binder), an editor (and sometimes author), a marketer, a publisher, and a postmaster—roles that blurred.”

Friss goes on to browse through the history of American bookstores in chapters that cover Chicago’s Marshall Field’s, the country’s “first book superstore,” as well as the last bastion on New York City’s erstwhile Book Row, the Strand. Having started with Franklin, it’s fitting that Friss’ final chapter focuses on another writer-bookseller: Ann Patchett. Patchett was already a successful author when she co-founded Nashville’s Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes in 2011. Friss tells us that Parnassus, along with other indies such as Word Up in New York City’s  Washington Heights neighborhood known as “Little Dominican Republic,” and Solid State Books, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, D.C., have built loyal followings that have (mostly) enabled them to weather the COVID-19 pandemic—and Amazon.

Will the unique animal of the independent bookshop survive? In many ways, Friss suggests, that’s up to readers and book lovers—to us.

 

The Bookshop is an entertaining romp through the history of America’s bookstores, paying tribute to dusty stacks, colorful booksellers and the dedicated patrons who have helped shops endure.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistoryAmerican History

The Bluestockings

Review by Roger Bishop

In 18th-century England, women and men had no setting where it was acceptable to converse as equals on intellectual subjects like literature, fine art, foreign affairs, history, philosophy and science. That is, until women began hosting lively gatherings that defied sexist gender norms.

When Elizabeth Montagu began hosting her salons in her house in London, she started a trend that historian Susannah Gibson calls “the centerpiece of the first women’s liberation movement.” Gibson’s meticulously researched and beautifully written The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women’s Movement tells how this groundbreaking development changed the lives of women who achieved prestige as novelists, poets, translators and advocates of education.

Gibson spotlights salon hosts Elizabeth Montagu and Hester Thrale alongside prominent intellectual figures of the period: novelists Frances Burney and Sarah Scott, poets Ann Yearsley and Hannah More, author and advocate Mary Wollstonecraft and historian Catharine Macaulay. “Whatever magic Montagu weaved within the walls of her salon,” writes Gibson, “the old spell was broken and the learned lady—so despised elsewhere—suddenly became a desirable person to know . . . even an aspirational figure.” Macaulay is of particular interest because her experience is emblematic of the existent societal tension. Her multivolume history of England was widely praised, yet she dealt with “an enormous amount of male prejudice.”

The term “bluestocking” “caught on as a way of valuing intellectual endeavors above fashion.”  While Gibson acknowledges the diversity of opinions among the Bluestockings, she writes that, on the whole, they “were advocating for the most fundamental woman’s right: the right to be acknowledged as an independent individual of inherent worth.” Laying the groundwork of a whole new worldview, the movement influenced the suffragists of the next century. Consistently enlightening and insightful, The Bluestockings should be widely read by both women and men.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, The Bluestockings recounts the lives of 18th-century women who forged a path for feminist movements to come.
NonfictionScienceMemoirAnimals

Sharks Don’t Sink

Review by Celia Mattison

It’s clear from the jump of Jasmin Graham’s marvelous Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist why the author feels such a kinship with the titular fish. Sharks, who have survived five mass extinctions, are survivors. As Graham narrates her journey to becoming a marine biologist, from a childhood spent fishing with her Black family in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; to founding Minorities in Shark Sciences, an organization that funds research opportunities for people of color; to becoming a “rogue” scientist, we see that Graham, too, is a survivor resistant to easy classification.

In conversational prose that makes marine biology both accessible and exciting to a layperson, Graham describes the slings and arrows of shark research as a Black woman who has an infectious curiosity in and reverence for the natural world and refuses to be pushed out of it by the white men who still dominate shark science. As some of these men devolve into a screaming match about affirmative action at a professional conference, Graham locks eyes with the only other person of color, thinking, “What on earth have we gotten ourselves into?” Five years later, Graham had enough. In 2022, after questioning if she should leave science entirely, Graham became a rogue scientist, without a permanent academic affiliation. Like her beloved sharks, she adapted.

Along with Graham’s abiding love of all things oceanic, the other most potent force in Sharks Don’t Sink is her persistent belief in community. Graham pays tribute to the many scientists who paved the way for her, from a professor who offered her master’s level work while she was still an undergraduate, to the field-defining work of Japanese American shark researcher Dr. Eugenie Clark. This careful tending by her community has allowed Graham to thrive as a “Black, proud, nervous, and nerdy” scientist who has become one of the most prominent voices in marine conservation.

The cartilaginous skeletons of sharks have made it nearly impossible to leave fossil records.  Likewise, the history and triumphs of too many Black women scientists have been lost. Graham’s story of charting her own course is both an important record and a delight. “You don’t need to change the world,” Graham writes, as she thinks back on the group of Black friends she made as a child at her mostly white magnet school. “You just need to change your small piece of the world.”

 

In Sharks Don’t Sink, marine biologist Jasmin Graham pushes for diversity in her field while also celebrating her deep, abiding love for the titular fish.
NonfictionTrue Crime

Reap the Whirlwind

Review by Natalia Berry

Peter Houlahan’s Reap the Whirlwind: Violence, Race, Justice, and the Story of Sagon Penn recounts a historic 1985 crime that would irrevocably change Southern California. At its swirling center is Sagon Penn, a 23-year-old Black Buddhist, martial artist and community mentor who had never been in any legal trouble until two white patrol cops, Donovan Jacobs and Tom Riggs, followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men, some of them teenagers, up a dirt road.

The setting is a growing San Diego in flux. A progressive new police chief hoped to calm the city’s simmering racial tensions and address the disproportionate number of cops killed in the line of duty. Both crises came to a head when Jacobs incorrectly fingered the young men in the truck to be gang members—including the driver, Penn. An argument escalated into a brutal physical altercation, during which the cops reportedly used racial slurs. Within three minutes, Penn grabbed Riggs’ service weapon and fatally shot him. Then Penn shot both Jacobs and a civilian who was riding along with him, and fled the scene in a squad car.

Reap the Whirlwind’s novelistic narrative style delivers emotional weight as Houlahan, a master storyteller, plots out the cataclysmic event and its aftermath. Houlahan covers all angles, from skewed news reporting on the shooting to the inner workings of the judicial system to the messy interpersonal drama that followed Penn, whose psyche suffered devastating consequences. Though Penn is undoubtedly the focus of the book, Houlahan offers textured characterizations of significant players, like Penn’s lawyer, Milton Silverman Jr.; defense investigator Bob McDaniel; and Sara Pina-Ruiz, the only credible witness. When the story develops into a full-fledged courtroom drama, Houlahan remains an impartial, careful observer and rarely offers his own opinion, which allows readers to form their own conclusions and develop a personal investment in the case and those closest to it.

A topical, piercing story about how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are, Reap the Whirlwind shows how police brutality and racial profiling impact Black victims far beyond the actual incident—even when they make it out alive.

The piercing Reap the Whirlwind chronicles a historic 1985 homicide, and shows how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are.

Parachute

The dynamic, photo-heavy Parachute shows the titular brand’s influence on fashion and culture.
NonfictionNatureAnimals

Meet the Neighbors

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Brandon Keim’s thought-provoking, beautifully written Meet the Neighbors: Animal Minds and Life in a More-Than-Human World is perfect for those who love to read al fresco, surrounded by the very creatures the author urges us to view with curiosity, compassion and kinship.

From adorable bumblebees to fearsome grizzly bears and everything—well, everyone—in between, Keim is a staunch advocate for viewing animals as fellows, and not just those we’ve brought into our homes: “Even as we recognize our beloved pets as thinking, feeling beings with a first-person experience of life, and grapple—however inconsistently—with the selfhood of animals used for food and research, that’s not how we’re socialized to regard wild animals.”

So what if, in addition to cats and dogs plus “a select few stars, such as chimpanzees and dolphins,” we acknowledge that raccoons, coyotes and salamanders are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are? There’s plenty of scientific evidence that wild creatures are self-aware and think strategically, Keim explains, even if it’s not always in a form we recognize. To wit, earthworms can distinguish between soil displaced by their own slithering and the push of a shovel, coyotes can invent games, and starlings are more relaxed after having bathed—just like us!

In addition to translating copious scientific revelations with reverence and aplomb, Meet the Neighbors sheds light on damaging biases in conventional wisdom, such as the value of instinct. ’Tis true, humans are encouraged to follow their instincts to boost awareness, safety or success. However, Keim notes, “When applied to animals, it’s used dismissively. Then instinctive means thoughtless, the opposite of reasoned, a lesser form of intelligence than our own.”

The journalist and author of 2017’s The Eye of the Sandpiper also delves into animal rights philosophy, hunting regulations, wildlife management and more. Through it all, Keim exhorts readers to consider: “How might an awareness of animal minds shape the ways we understand them and, ultimately, how we live with them on this shared, precious planet?” Meet the Neighbors offers an edifying, awe-inspiring start.

Brandon Keim’s awe-inspiring Meet the Neighbors exhorts us to consider that all animals, from dolphins to salamanders, are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are.

Mississippi Swindle

Mississippi Swindle is the shocking true story of how public welfare funds were used to finance the extravagant lifestyles of an elite few.

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